From Publishers Weekly
This extraordinarily well-written and deeply nuanced work is the best of the recent spate of books celebrating the Wright Brothers and the 100-year anniversary of their invention of the airplane. Award-winning biographer Tobin (Ernie Pyle's War) provides a detailed yet truly exciting tale of the brothers' lifelong effort to stand "against the wave of popular doubt about the possibility of human flight." The book's strength resides in Tobin's careful depiction of two main elements of the Wright story. First, Tobin provides the fullest and most sympathetic account yet written of the close-knit Wright family and the impact of its ethic-"the Wrights versus the world"-on the brothers, at the same time that he recaptures the personal qualities that were forgotten after they became aviation icons. ("Will had a devastating dry wit, but there was more fun in Orville.") Second, Tobin is stunningly effective in presenting the intertwining lives of the brothers and an amazing cast of friends and competitors, including such inventors as Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian and creator of the doomed Aerodrome, and his friend and fellow flight enthusiast Alexander Graham Bell; Octave Chanute, one of the brothers' earliest supporters; and Glenn Curtiss, the brothers' main competitor. Tobin's final chapter, which details Wilbur Wright's historic flight in 1909 circling Manhattan, is a definitive account of the crowning final triumph of the Wrights' career.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
James Tobin has written an outstanding account of the passions that drove Orville and Wilbur Wright from the bike shop to the air and helped them earn a place in history for first flight. Boyd Gaines reads the work in an appropriate scholarly voice yet manages to capture the excitement that drove the brothers. Gaines reads quotes from each brother with a fitting Midwestern sound. Other characters speak with accents and voices that place them where they belong. Tobin's impeccably researched work reads like a novel, and Gaines's performance takes the work one step farther, turning the piece into a story more exhilarating than most fiction. H.L.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
In this centenary of the airplane, Tobin re-creates the course, in its technological and biographical dimensions, of the Wright brothers' claim to its invention. This is such commonplace knowledge as to make its reiteration seemingly unnecessary, but its acknowledgment was not conceded at the time by the partisans of Samuel Langley and Glenn Curtiss. Tobin adopts this disputatious aspect to the Wrights' story to distinguish his work from standard biographies such as Fred Howard's Wilbur and Orville (1987), so he pays careful attention to the differences between the Wrights' attack on the problem of flight and Langley's. Langley had advantages: scientific eminence, publicity, and a government subsidy, but he never personally tried to fly, nor measured the performance of wings, as the Wrights did. Confirming their superior methods and diligence, Tobin proceeds to their difficulties in capitalizing on their flying machine, ascribing woes to their own reticence and the rapidity of rivals' progress. Perceiving the Wrights' us-against-the-world mentality, Tobin transforms thorough research into a flowing narrative with news for even connoisseurs of Kitty Hawk. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Ron Powers Co-author of Flags of Our Fathers What The Metaphysical Club was to the development of philosophic thought in America, this beautiful book is to the development of man in flight. Far more than a mere account of the Wright brothers' triumph, To Conquer the Air is a yeasty, richly drawn evocation of an era and of the strange, visionary, obsessed, and difficult men who battled one another to claim it in their name.
To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight FROM THE PUBLISHER
Award-winning author James Tobin has at last penned the definitive account of the inspiring and impassioned race across ten years and two continents to conquer the air. For years, Wilbur Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as Samuel Langley, armed with a contract from the U.S. War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley saw flight as a problem of power, the Wrights saw a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths -- Langley's toward oblivion, the Wrights' toward the heavens -- though not before facing countless other obstacles. With a historian's accuracy and a novelist's eye, Tobin has captured an extraordinary moment in history. To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
This extraordinarily well-written and deeply nuanced work is the best of the recent spate of books celebrating the Wright Brothers and the 100-year anniversary of their invention of the airplane. Award-winning biographer Tobin (Ernie Pyle's War) provides a detailed yet truly exciting tale of the brothers' lifelong effort to stand "against the wave of popular doubt about the possibility of human flight." The book's strength resides in Tobin's careful depiction of two main elements of the Wright story. First, Tobin provides the fullest and most sympathetic account yet written of the close-knit Wright family and the impact of its ethic-"the Wrights versus the world"-on the brothers, at the same time that he recaptures the personal qualities that were forgotten after they became aviation icons. ("Will had a devastating dry wit, but there was more fun in Orville.") Second, Tobin is stunningly effective in presenting the intertwining lives of the brothers and an amazing cast of friends and competitors, including such inventors as Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian and creator of the doomed Aerodrome, and his friend and fellow flight enthusiast Alexander Graham Bell; Octave Chanute, one of the brothers' earliest supporters; and Glenn Curtiss, the brothers' main competitor. Tobin's final chapter, which details Wilbur Wright's historic flight in 1909 circling Manhattan, is a definitive account of the crowning final triumph of the Wrights' career. (Mar.) Forecast: The best yet of all the books celebrating the Wrights' 100-year anniversary, this should stand as the definitive account of their life and times, and will sell accordingly. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Although offering few novel revelations on the Wright saga, this book represents the most forceful argument to date for the brothers' monumental legacy to the history of flight. While several scholars (Herbert Johnson in Wingless Eagle and Seth Shulman in Unlocking The Sky) have depicted the Ohioans as grasping entrepreneurs whose avarice and small-mindedness crippled early aeronautical development, Tobin (Ernie Pyle's War) spotlights the complex characters and questionable motives of their opponents. In profiling such colleagues/competitors as Samuel P. Langley, Octave Chanute, August Herring, Alexander Graham Bell, and Glenn Curtiss, as well as the brothers' numerous European challengers, the author effectively shows that the Wrights had to contend with an entrenched aeronautical oligarchy at home and abroad in order to secure the respect and financial consideration due them. Tobin's vivid and comprehensible descriptions of the brothers' on-site flying and laboratory experiments compare favorably with T.A. Heppenheimer's First Flight and T.D. Crouch and Peter Jakab's The Wright Brothers, and his lengthy passages on their successful European trials are outstanding. Tobin deftly outlines the family environment in which these rather eccentric geniuses grew to manhood and the personal price sister Katharine paid in giving them a loving and supportive base from which to pursue their great preoccupation. This lucidly written and exhaustively researched study is recommended for all aviation collections and all libraries.-John Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Cleveland Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Kitty Hawk was just the beginning for the Wright brothers, explains NBCC Awardﾽwinner Tobin (Ernie Pyleﾽs War, 1997) in his history of their first flight and ensuing efforts to make flying practical and profitable. For Wilbur Wright in 1899, human flight was "only a question of knowledge and skill as in all acrobatic feats." However, as detailed in this bright-eyed narrative, that didnﾽt mean it was going to be easy. Nor did the Wright brothers have the field to themselves, writes Tobin. Alexander Graham Bell had a team working hard and with considerable success, albeit always in the wake of the Wrightsﾽ continuing ability to build a better airplane. Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Pierpont Langley also had his eye on the prize (though his efforts resembled those of Icarus), and so did others around the globe. At stake was not just the accolade of being the first to stay aloft; the author makes it clear that flightﾽs potential monetary rewards were always part of the equation, especially for national governments interested in deploying aircraft as tools of warfare. Throughout the first half, Tobin concentrates on all the tinkering and design trials conducted by the various teams involved: Langleyﾽs "aerodrome" and its ride off the rails of a raft and straight into the drink (photos of the event, included here, are deeply amusing), as well the Wrightsﾽ numerous experiments with gliders before they attached an engine to a craft. Then came that wonderful 59-second, 852-foot flight, an astonishing act followed by the comedy of its reporting by journalists who, of course, got all the particulars wrong. The second half follows the work to perfect the machine and the tricky maneuverings to earnsome financial reward for all the effort and expense. A meticulous account of the grinding, day-to-day advances and setbacks, but also infected with the sheer wonder of taking wing. (Photos)
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